Military Violence Ignited Public Fury in South Korea

September 17, 2014

By Hojin Choi

Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

SEOUL, South Korea – There are two recent cases that implicitly demonstrate the abuse problems in the South Korean military.

In June, Sergeant Lim opened fire on his fellow soldiers. Five soldiers were killed and seven were injured. They were returning to their base after training, and, surprisingly, it was not a shooting spree since the sergeant aimed at each one of the victims. He attempted to commit suicide, but was arrested with severe injury.

The group memorial altar for five dead soldiers who were killed by Sergeant Lim (Reuters)

In April, Private Yoon died in his military base after being beaten to death by his senior troops. Yoon had suffered from habitual abuse and bullying at the hands of his fellow troops. This incident was unknown to the public until the Korean civic group, the Center for Military Human Rights, revealed it.

These two cases have several similarities. First, at the outset, there were bullying problems. Second, Both Lim and Yoon faced their situations by themselves without any help from outside. The only difference is that Yoon had endured his suffering until he died while Lim exploded his anger through extreme retaliation, murdering his comrades. Several Korean media stated that if Lim did not kill the aggressors, he would have ended up like Sergeant Yoon.

What the 20-year-old private, Yoon, had suffered is close to torture. He was denied food and forced to consume phlegm and his own vomit. He was beaten with fists, feet, and mop handles until they broke. When he became groggy, he was hooked up with intravenous drip to be revived and beaten again as he woke up. He was ordered to hold “horse-riding” stances for hours and forced to have an irritating salve rubbed on his genitals. On April 6, he was forced to eat frozen food right after being punched and kicked. He died thereafter.

One of the key causes leading to such severe military violence is the closed environment of the military. Its strict and conservative hierarchy system tends to obscure the violence even after someone dies. This tendency is related to promotions of higher rank officials. Moreover, a strong “pecking order” within Korean society makes its people more vulnerable to bullying problems not only in the military but also at work places and in schools.

In Yoon’s case, several officials did recognize Yoon’s situation, but did not take action to intervene. The military officially confirmed his cause of death as choking. However, after the public outcries, it changed its report to “death from shock” by intensive physical abuses. The military has since brought murder charges against the suspects in Yoon’s case.

In addition to the characteristics of the military and society, the conscription system makes the violence function as a vicious circle. In South Korea, it is mandatory for all male citizens to join the military for 2 to 3 years. When lower rank soldiers become senior ranks, they repeat the violations that they have suffered on the new soldiers.

According to a statistical inquiry, there are 152 dead bodies, which are classified as death from “failure to adjust to military life,” kept in the military morgue. Their families have refused to take the bodies until the “truth” is revealed by independent investigations that include civil experts. In recent five years, over 120 soldiers have died in the military and 80 of them were classified as “suicides.” Allegedly, some of the bodies with “suicide” tags are not even real suicide cases.

In South Korea, people who could legally avoid the military duty by substituted work or low levels of physical condition are called “sons of god.” Private Yoon’s mother, Ahn Mi Ja, said to CNN that “I wanted to do to them exactly what they did to my son.”

For more information, please see:

CNN – South Korean soldiers face murder charge amid bullying claim – 4 September 2014

The New York Times – Outrage Builds in South Korea in Deadly Abuse of a Soldier – 6 August 2014

Asian Human Rights Commission – SOUTH KOREA: Military camps or government run torture centres? – 28 August 2014

BBC – South Korea military under fire over abuse – August 27 2014

Venezuelan’s Plastic Surgeons are Seeing the Impact of Shortages

September 16, 2014

By Delisa Morris

Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

Woman being prepped for plastic surgery on her breast. Photo courtesy of Daily News

CARACAS, Venezuela — There’s nothing new about Venezuelan’s complaining over chronic shortages since the governments restrictive currency controls deprive local businesses of the money to import foreign goods. However, outcry from Venezuelan women has begun to grow louder since FDA approved silicone breast implants have become scarce within the country.

Many women are so desperate that they and their doctors are turning to implants that are the wrong size or made in China, with less rigorous quality standards. Previously, Venezuelans had easy access to implants approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Today doctors say they are now all-but impossible to find because restrictive currency controls have deprived local businesses of the cash to import foreign goods. It may not be the worst shortfall facing the socialist South American country, but surgeons say the issue cuts to the psyche of the image conscious Venezuelan woman. Venezuelan’s are obsessed with their appearance.

“The women are complaining,” said Ramon Zapata, president of the Society of Plastic Surgeons. “Venezuelan women are very concerned with their self-esteem.”

Venezuela has one of the world’s highest plastic surgery rates, and the breast implant is the premiere procedure. Doctors performed 85,000 implants there last year, according to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. Only the U.S., Brazil, Mexico and Germany, all with much larger populations, saw more breast implants.

While there are no official statistics on how many Venezuelans are walking around with enhanced busts, a stroll down any Caracas street reveals that the augmentations are prevalent there more than in other surgery-loving places. The mannequins even look like they have had breast implants.

In the recent past, women could enter raffles for implants held by pharmacies, workplaces and even politicians on the campaign trail. During this spring’s anti-government street demonstrations, the occasional sign protesting the rising price of breast implants blended with posters against food shortages and currency devaluation.

“It’s a culture of ‘I want to be more beautiful than you.’ That’s why even people who live in the slums get implants,” surgeon Daniel Slobodianik said.

Slobodianik used to perform several breast implants each wee, but now performs about two a month. He says women call his office daily to ask for the specific implant size they’re looking for and when they can’t find it they almost always size up.

Frustrated, the women have little sympathy, especially not from the government. The consumerism of plastic surgery never fit with the rhetoric of socialist revolution. The late President Hugo Chavez called the country’s plastic surgery fixation “monstrous,” and railed against the practice of giving implants to girls on their 15th birthdays.

For more information, please see:

CBS News – Breast Implant Shortage in Venezuela – 15 Sept 2014

Huffington Post – Breast Implants are Newest Shortage in Venezuela – 15 Sept 2014

NBC News – Venezuela’s Chronic Shortages Hit Brand-Name Breast Implants – 15 Sept 2014

Daily News – Venezuela’s Shortage of Breast Implants Leads to Riskier Decisions – 15 Sept 2014

Syrian Refugees Attacked in Lebanon

September 16, 2014

By Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Managing Editor Impunity Watch

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Ibrahim Abbas Ali and his family, who fled the deadly civil war in Syria in the hopes of finding safety in neighboring Lebanon, awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of gunfire outside their tent in a makeshift refugee camp housing around 200 people. The family fled to the nearby fields. The Gunmen set fire to several tempts, including the one used by Mr. Ali and his family, destroying the few belongs the family of 18 managed to bring across the border. The family also lost their officials documents, including their U.N. refugee cards. “We lost all the aid we received from the U.N. and all we were left with are the clothes we are wearing,” Mr. Ali said.

Ibrahim Abbas Ali, 50, fled with his two wives and children from Aleppo in Syria, says his families tent was destroyed by gunmen. (Photo courtesy of USA Today)

The camp appears to have been the target of a wave of so called revenge attacks that were carried out after one of several Lebanese soldiers who was captured by militants in Syria in a cross-border wave was beheaded by jihadists earlier this months. The killing of the Shiite soldier by Sunni extremists has aggravated sectarian tensions in Lebanon, a country whose population is now about 50% refugees, which has become bitterly divided over the ongoing war in Syria.

Violence targeting the refugee population has spread to the capital where a mob of young men attacked Syrian refugees sheltering under a bridge over the weekend. In other parts of Beirut, leaflets have been dispersed calling on Syrians to leave or “be slaughtered or tortured to death.”

Gunmen attacked refugees living in a camp near the town of Brital. The residents described a night of terror that was reminiscent of the horrors they fled in Syria. Mohammed Darwish, 45, said most of the camp’s residents were sleeping on the night of Sept. 6 when gunmen, many of them wearing masks, arrived in several SUVs. “Oh you dogs. We are coming to slaughter you,” he heard the gunmen yell as they fired their weapons into the air, driving out the camp the terrified residents. Mr. Darwish said he too fled into the nearby fields with his six children. A Lebanese resident of the town of Brital said the attack was carried out by local “thugs and troublemakers” who do not represent the feelings of the Brital community.

“We live in the fear of being subjected to an attack, although we have not been threatened,” said Fatoum Allawi, 65, who fled from the northern Syrian town of Saraqib and is now sheltering near Riyak. “We are mostly women and children here with a few men who work nearby,” she said as she sat on a plastic chair holding her granddaughter.

Syrian refugees living in Lebanon have faced discrimination both from violent thugs and members of the community who resent their entering the country and members of the government who have refused to recognize their status as refugees and have refused to provide government assistance to Syrians fleeing atrocity at home. Earlier this month the Lebanese Labor Minister Sejaan Azzi proposed that all Syrian refugees should go home suggesting that they should return to rebel held or regime held areas based on their loyalties. He said, “What is at stake now is the proposal that refugees who trust the regime return to the areas under regime control, and those who have faith in Nusra Front and ISIS go to the regions under their control.”

Shortly after the Labour ministers statements the Lebanese government announced its intention to set up two camps for Syrian refugees along the border, marking the first time the government established such camps in the three year history of the deadly conflict in Syria. Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas announced the plan last Thursday. “The Council of the Ministers has taken a decision to set up camps for Syrian refugees, one in the Bekaa valley in the Masnaa area and one in the Abda area in northern Lebanon,” Derbas said. “Estimates are that each camp could accommodate 10,000 people,” he added.

The sudden influx of refugees into the ebonies population has placed great strains on the country’s limited resources. The government has so far failed to adequately address the issue, inflaming tensions between Lebanese citizens and refugees fleeing violence in Syria, who now fear that the war has followed them across the border. Aisha Mohammed, a 26-year old Syrian refugee said she came from Syria’s northern province of Raqqa, which is now held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group and has come under increasing attack by Syrian regime warplanes. “I wish I could return to Raqqa but the bombings have intensified,” she said. “We have fled from fear in Syria and here we are living in fear in Lebanon.”

For more information Please see:

USA Today – Syria refugees attacked in Lebanon – 13 September 2014

The Daily Star: Lebanon – Lebanon minister: All Syrian refugees must return home – 5 September 2014

The Daily Star: Lebanon – Lebanon to open first Syria refugee camps: minister – 11 September 2014

The New York Times – Syrian Refugees Surpass 3 Million, U.N. Says – 29 August 2014

Scottish Nationalism: A House of Cards for Europe and the World

September 15, 2014

By Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Impunity Watch Managing Editor

EDINBURGH, Scotland – On September 18 the Scottish People will go to the polls to determine the future of their country. The Scottish people will close whether to maintain their more than 300 year political union with England or to dissolve the political bands that have bound them to the United Kingdom and enter the international community as an independent state. The United Kingdom’s Tory Prime Minister David Cameron spent part of the day on Monday in Aberdeen, the heart of the Scottish Oil industry, which if Scotland become independent would control the largest known reserves in Europe, trying to urge voters to maintain the union. While the vote remains too close to call, what is clear is that, no matter the outcome, the Scottish independence referendum will have far reaching consequences for nationalist and independence movements within the United Kingdom and the European community as a whole. European governments fear that with a single vote the Scottish people could bring down old empires and fragile unions like a house of cards.

IMG_6216 (1) — Edinburgh Castle, one of the Scottish capitals most iconic landmarks, dominates the city’s skyline, its home on Castle rock has been inhabited since the Iron Age nearly 2,000 years ago. Castle rock and its castle fortress has ben involved in several conflicts including the Scottish wars for Independence in the 14th Century. (Photo: Kathryn Maureen Ryan, 2013)

The Scottish Nationalist Party has campaigned promising that an independent Scotland will maintain a closer relationship with the European Union than Westminster, which has historically opposed further European integration, fiercely fighting open immigration policies as well as integration into the Eurozone. Ironically an Independent Scotland could face difficult in building a stronger relationship with Europe because it will likely face strong opposition from EU members that fear that a successful, peaceful secession of Scotland from the United Kingdom could renew calls for independence from separatists and nationalists movements within their own countries.

Spain has promised it stand against an application for EU membership from an independent Scotland likely out of fears that a successful, peaceful, Scottish independence movement could awaken calls for independence from the Catalan and Basque separatists’ movements in Spain. Several other EU member states face nationalist campaigns of their own, France likely fears that an independent Scotland could encourage supporters of an independent Brittney to call for their own referendum, while Belgium leaders likely fear calls for independence could tear apart the fragile union between the Walloons and Flemish populations of Belgium. The vote may also become a symbol of nationalism outside of Europe, where independence movements from the Tibetan and Uyghurs in China to the Quebec independence movement in Canada as well as the dozens of ethnic nationalism movements throughout Africa, Latin America and Oceania, which may call for their own chance for a democratic referendum after the Scottish people make their historic vote.

The vote will also have implications elsewhere in the United Kingdom, especially in Northern Ireland where Unionists and Irish Republicans alike are watching the elections in Scotland closely, knowing that the outcome could affect the ultimate outcomes of their own movements. Northern Ireland has lived under a fragile peace since the Good Friday Agreement, brokered by then Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President Bill Clinton, was signed in 1998 establishing a power sharing government for Northern Ireland. While the power-sharing government brought great changes to the region, helping Northern Ireland move beyond the darkest and bloodiest days of the troubles tensions can still be felt between catholic and protestant communities in some areas throughout the country, especially in Belfast where the Peace Walls, now the world’s oldest actively maintained apartheid walls, still divide working class catholic and protestant neighborhoods and where several schools remain segregated on the basis of religion.

IMG_6339 (1) — The Belfast Peace Walls, plastered in propaganda from both Catholic and Protestant political activist, class for peace and understanding in the community and covered in the signatures of visitors from around the world, are today considered the oldest apartheid walls in the world, active longer than the Berlin Wall. While the walls are a symbol of a fragile peace many believe they divide the society more than unite it, serving as a constant reminder of perceived differences in the community (Photo: Kathryn Maureen Ryan, 2013)

The Republic of Irelands former European Affairs Minister Lucinda Creighton believes that if Scotland votes to secede from the United Kingdom new demands for a referendum on a united Ireland will be ‘inevitable. “I think it would inevitably lead to demand for such a referendum (in Northern Ireland). I don’t know what the outcome of such a referendum would be. We are all committed now to the principle of consent in Northern Ireland, respective of both communities and that’s something I would feel very strongly about,” she said. “That would be a pretty unbelievable move that I don’t think anybody could have contemplated 10 years ago. It will have major political consequences for Ireland if it is carried.”

Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, a former commander in the Irish Republican Army and member of the Sinn Fein party which ultimately supports union with The Republic of Ireland, has said he is “staying out” of the independence debate, which he believes is a “matter for the people of Scotland,” however he added that he believes the independence movement will have a far reaching effect on the politics and future of Northern Ireland. “If Scotland gets, in the context of there being a No vote, power over social welfare and the ability to decide their own social welfare payment rates then that has big implications for us and I think that I would hope that we can benefit from the outcome of that,” he added “Whatever way it goes I think it will have a profound impact on the situation in Ireland, and specifically in the North of Ireland, particularly in relation to the battle that we’re having with the British Government at this time over the swingeing cuts that they have brought in.”

The Scottish Independence movement was not born overnight, nor was it born out of the Devolution process which led to the creation of the Scottish Parliament under the Blair premiership. In many ways the Scottish independence movement is older than the United Kingdom itself. In 1320 the Declaration of Arbroath, often cited as the most important document in Scottish history, was signed issuing a declaration of the independence of the Scottish people, promising that “as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.” No matter the outcome of Thursday’s vote it is clear that the centuries old flame of Scottish nationalism has never dimed and with a single vote it may ignite a flame of nationalism that will spread across Europe and the World.

For more information please see:

Aberdeen Evening Express – Cameron Flies into Aberdeen to Deliver Final Better Together Pledge – 15 September 2014

Al Jazeera America – Scotland to Hold Referendum on Independence from the UK – 15 September 2014

Irish Independent – Martin Mcguinness: Scottish Independence Referendum Would Have a ‘Profound Impact’ On Northern Ireland – 11 September 2014

Reuters UK – Why Scottish Independence Matters For Europe – 9 September 2014

Irish Independent – Referendum Moves In North ‘Inevitable’ If Scots Secede – 8 September 2014

BBC History – The Declaration of Arbroath, 1320

Murder on the High Seas: Traffickers Suspected of Ramming Refugee Ship

September 15, 2014

By Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Managing Editor Impunity Watch

BRUSSELS, European Union – 700 refugee’s fleeing Africa for Europe are feared dead in the Mediterranean after two separate shipwrecks last week. the International Organization for Migration (IOM) fear the refugees likely drowned in the Mediterranean which would bringing the death toll for Mediterranean crossing deaths to nearly 3,000, making 2014 the deadliest year on record for refugees making the dangerous water crossing from North Africa to the shores of southern Europe.

The most recent shipwreck occurred of the cost of Libya where a ship crammed with as many as 250 African emigrants sank. The Libyan navy said that while 26 people survived the shipwreck most of the migrants are feared dead. Four days later, on September 10^th a ship carrying hundreds of migrants was sank off the cost of Malta by traffickers in the region. As many as 500 migrants ae believed to have died after traffickers rammed their ship off of the cost of Malta last week. The victims were Syrians, Palestinians, Egyptians and Sudanese refugees hoping to find safe haven in Europe. Only nine people survived the incident, two of the survivors testified that the trackers ordered the migrants to change vessels in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. According to the testimony, when the migrants refugee the traffickers confronted the ship and rammed into the migrant’s vessel.

The ship had left Damietta, Egypt for Europe on Saturday September 6^th and sank after being rammed by traffickers on September 10^th. “In all, nine people survived and were picked up boats,” Berthiaume said. IOM officials interviewed two Palestinian survivors who were taken to Sicily, Italy, while other survivors were taken to Malta and to Crete, Greece, IOM Spokesperson Christiane Berthiaume said.

According to the IOM, after the boat sank, the survivors spent a day fighting for their lives in open water. According to the two survivors who testified, both of whom Palestinian refugees, the victims were tried to hold on to life buoys to survive. One of the survivors was in a lifejacket while the other was holding onto one of the life buoys with other victims who did not survive. One of the survivors said that among the diseased was a young Egyptian boy who hoped to raise money in Europe to pay for his father’s heart operation.

The survivors say their ship was deliberately rammed because, fearing for their lives, the refugee refused to leave the ship under the orders of the human trafficking vessel. “If this story, which police are investigating, is true, it would be the worst shipwreck in years… not an accident but a mass murder, perpetrated by criminals without scruples or any respect for human life,” IOM said in a statement Monday.

For more information please see:

CBS News – 700 Feared Dead In Mediterranean Boat Wrecks – 15 September 2014

The Guardian – Migrant Boat Was ‘Deliberately Sunk’ In Mediterranean Sea, Killing 500 – 15 September 2014

Hindustan Times – Traffickers ‘Sink’ Ship Carrying Migrants in Mediterranean, 500 Feared Dead Off Malta Coast – 15 September 2014

Reuters – Over 500 Migrants Feared Dead After Human Traffickers ‘Deliberately Sank the Boat’ – 15 September 2014